Brief Tj Littlejohn
Brief: TJ Littlejohn
Prepared: March 20, 2026 Context: 1909 founder, meeting at 1pm today Current project: TapKit (iPhone agentic product, pre-launch/stealth)
Background
- From South Florida, went to Florida State University
- Started as a math guy, wanted to do pure math, explored finance, then picked up coding
- Found iOS development through hackathons
- Landed an Apple internship through a hackathon, which turned into a four-year role doing R&D and experience prototyping
- Left Apple to join a startup, then quickly pivoted into the Solana/crypto ecosystem
Career Timeline
| Period | Role |
|---|---|
| ~2016-2020 | Apple, R&D and Experience Prototyping |
| ~2021 | Left for startups, found Solana |
| Early 2022 | Co-founded mtnPay at mtnDAO hacker house |
| 2022 | Won 1st Place, Payments Track, Solana Riptide Hackathon |
| ~2022-2024 | Joined Solana Labs to lead payments engineering |
| Current | Founder of TapKit, associated with Jootsing Research |
mtnPay (notable founder story)
- Built at mtnDAO, a month-long Solana hacker house
- Origin: TJ was buying a Red Bull from a self-service kiosk and thought it would be funny to rebuild the checkout experience using Solana Pay
- Went from idea to working MVP in 48 hours
- First point-of-sale system to accept Solana Pay, integrated with Square
- Got enough visibility that a US congressman made a purchase using it at mtnDAO
- Co-built with a collaborator named Scott
Current: TapKit and Jootsing Research
- TapKit is described as an iPhone agentic product (limited public info, likely pre-launch)
- GitHub profile lists him in San Francisco, associated with an org called "Jootsing Research"
- "Jootsing" = concept from Daniel Dennett about studying a system deeply and then deliberately breaking its rules to create something new
- Also launched "Gib" (~March 2025), a Studio Ghibli-style AI photo platform
Online Presence
- X: @tj_littlejohn (stale, bio: "prev @solanalabs @mtnpay @apple")
- GitHub: littlejohntj (30 repos, iOS and TypeScript projects)
- LinkedIn: t-j-littlejohn (still shows Apple)
- Devpost: sxeteej (hackathon projects)
- Podcast: Chewing Glass ep. 5 on Solana Podcast (deep origin story interview)
- Phantom Podcast: mtnPay Founder, Ep. 6
Natural Connection Points
- Fellow Florida native, South Florida roots
- Math background parallels O.J.'s math interest and mathbliss.com
- Non-traditional path into tech (hackathons to Apple, not CS degree track)
- Builder-founder energy, ships fast (48 hours to MVP)
- Apple R&D experience prototyping directly relevant to agentic iPhone work
- Both in 1909 community
Questions to Explore
- What did he learn doing payments engineering at Solana Labs that's informing TapKit?
- What does "agentic" mean in the iPhone context for him? (Siri/App Intents, something novel, or a different approach entirely?)
- What stage is TapKit at? Pre-launch, alpha, fundraising?
- What's Jootsing Research and how does it relate to TapKit?
- What brought him back to Florida / into the 1909 community?
- How is he thinking about distribution for an agentic mobile product?